Believers: Love and Death in Tehran

Thirty years have passed since a shattered Nilufar Hartman, pregnant and betrayed, fled Iran. She barely got out alive, carrying her deepest secrets of love and tragedy. Nilufar had arrived in Tehran in November 1979 to take a job as a junior American diplomat at the U.S. Embassy. She had instead spent nine years as an American spy, reporting from deep inside the new Islamic Republic as it collapsed into extremism, civil strife, and war. After her return to America, she chose a quiet university life and swore she would never again do Washington’s bidding. Her tranquility is upended by a plea from Alan Porter, the man who had sent her to Tehran in 1979. Porter tells her about a plot by colluding American and Iranian extremists to provoke a war between the two countries. He says she is the only person who can stop it. Nilufar is reluctant to go back to Iran, vividly recalling the agony of her years under cover, when she posed as a believer, the devout and revolutionary “Massoumeh”. She can never forget the horrific end to her mission when her lover and the father of her unborn child were murdered. A commitment to serve the United States, which never died inside her, propels her back into the maelstrom. Nilufar adopts another covert identity and returns to Iran to end the parallel conspiracies intent on sparking a conflict. While she is working in Tehran, Porter must stop the Americans ready to promote their private agendas through mass murder. Nilufar must evade Iran’s vicious secret police, deliver a message from America, convince a patriotic but suspicious group of Iranians to act, and once more manage a narrow escape from both Iran and her own memories. Read more